OneOtherLand
by sherlocktheterrible
Summary: Follow the White Rabbit. This turned out to be the best advice Almira had ever been given... Or was it really? The Chesire Cat doesn't seem to think so. Rated for violence in future chapters.
1. Almira Helen Lissette

**[+OneOtherLand+**

†

Chapter One

_i ought to be ashamed of myself_

_**F**_or Almira, it never once crossed her mind that something was wrong with her. She was laboring under the impression that if she made it to a hospital, she would be fine, and reunited with her family within a day. Of course, this was all nonesense. But if anyone tried to tell her, she wouldn't have heard it anyway. For, you see, Almira Helen Lissette was blind to the world.

It was a curious sort of numbness with which she wandered through a forest she had never even noticed before, where trees were old and twisted, and no sound was to be heard. To her, there was nothing unnatural about the shapes that moved on the edges of her blurred vision. She clutched her stomach with a detached sort of curiousity at the warmth and stickiness that had formed there. She felt that she was going the right way, but the thought that she could trust her own mind with the state she was in was shocking.

_This is the way,_ she thought, _just a little further now..._

Something white flashed in her line of sight. She stopped and contemplated what it was she was seeing, for it seemed to her to be just a bouncing white dot darting before her. She smiled in a clumsy sort of way and picked up her pace, following the dot between obstructions, black pillars representing trees, dark tangles for bushes. Her body, however, felt heavy and tight, and before long, she tripped over her own feet and went sprawling on the ground before a towering tree. "Hhhh..." She began, trying to find her voice. "Hhhhey? You...?" She blinked, laying on her stomach, watching the white thing get closer, study her for a moment, then dissapear over her head. "What... are... Uuuugghhhhhhh...!"

She was grabbed, and something long and spiny wrapped itself around her small waist. A searing pain went through her abdomen and she grunted as thorns scraped over a wound in her stomach. All too soon, she felt more vines, for that was all she could figure they were, wrap themselves around her. With suprising speed, they began to pull her into something dark at her feet that she couldn't see, and she screamed and struggled, only to find the vines grip her tighter. She felt as if her essence itself was being squeezed right from her as she was pulled into an empty darkness and dropped into an endless hole. Down, down, down...

†

_**A**_lice Ryanne Stanley-Lissette had been a writer. The subject matter of her writings were always far too profound and dark for even her own daughter to understand. She, Almira, humored her mother and skimmed her books, but never really read them. It was not that Almira never appreciated her mother's work, it was just easier to let her think that she understood. Because Almira had always equated an excessive imagination with a sort of latent madness--and not without good reason.

Alice had loved her daughter dearly, and received more than her share of affection in return. Almira was her mother's only child--the baby of the family--and she felt closer to her mother than she did her father. Despite the strangeness she knew lay hidden beneath the surface, Almira knew her mother was a good person, and that she was an intellegent human being. It had seemed to Almira that every imaginative speck in the family gene pool must have gone to her mother, because where her mother could come up with a new bed-time story every night if need be, she, herself, couldn't imagine her way out of the proverbial paper bag. But with that grand imagination came something nobody else would have expected; Alice saw things that other people couldn't.

She remembered cleary her sixteenth birthday. All of her friends were there to celebrate, and her dad had bought her a new car--and of course everyone she knew would be jealous of it--and as she sat there, in that euphoria of lightheadedness that followed making a wish and blowing out the candles, Alice had grabbed her by the arm and, in a sense, wrenched all of her attention away from the present. She knew from the look she was given that she had something important and private to say. So she followed her mother into the hallway, dimly aware of the laughter and talk from the dining room. She opened her mouth and was about to ask what was wrong, when her mother grabbed her by the shoulders and looked down into the eyes that were some much like, and at the same time so unlike her own.

"Aly, you listen to me," her mother began in a serious and frightened tone that acompanied the fear in her great blue eyes and a shiver in her frame. "If you ever happen to find yourself in a strange place, and you are scared and don't know where to go, follow the White Rabbit. He is the only one who won't lead you astray." Her voice was a pleading whisper when she continued, "Promise me you'll follow him! Promise me!" She shook Almira by the shoulders. She gaped at her, wide eyed and frightened.

"Mommy, you're scaring me..." Was all she could say in a choked whisper, tears welling in her eyes as she thought of how tortured her own mother must be by that mind of hers.

In response she was shaken again. "Promise me, Aly! You must promise me. It is important!" Almira's lip trembled and she nodded her head jerkily. Just then, her stout father turned the corner to see where they had gotten to. "The party's still going, Al, you shouldn't keep your guests waiting," he teased. They went back into the dining room and that was the end of that.

Such was Almira's former life. She was pampered and well cared for, and she could be a snotty little churl, but she was a good kid. Her parents had raised her well, better than anyone, who had any idea of how unstable her mother really was, could even imagine. Almira had always had the suspicion that she was the only one who knew something was off about Alice, but she was glad for her all the same. Glad, because she was the only one who knew how special she was.

†

_**B**_ut, _somebody_ found _something_ out, and Almira's life was turned on it's head before she turned eighteen. She somehow escaped. And deep in that hole, in the recesses of her muddled mind, a light turned on and she realized she was the only one who got out safe.

And down, down, down Almira fell, slowly regaining conciousness. She was falling foot first for what seemed like forever, flying past shelves stuffed with books, jars, preserved and withered objects, and abundance of analogous clocks and lit lamps that shut themselves off once she fell past them. If she had fallen in her conciousness, she probably would have been screaming the whole way down, but now that she was awake, it seemed to be a sillly thing to do to scream when there was no one about to help her. The most curious thing about this hole was that it was really warm and brightly painted with checkeboard patterns and polkadots that, for some reason, were at once comforting and sinister. But, being of a simple, calculating mind, Almira couldn't put a finger on why she felt such a way. She just did.

"This place is curious," she said to herself. "I wonder how far it goes?" As if in respose to her question, a few lamps beneath her flashed on and she saw the ground only moments before she hit a pile of straw and twigs emitting a foul smell. She sat up and rubbed her side, having fallen hard despite the cushioning. It was when she touched something wet and mushy that she launched herself away from the pile, having felt the carcass of some small rodent. She wagged her hand, cursing, but then she remembered something.

"Wasn't I, just a few moments ago, like that?" She asked her self, looking down at her middle. Seeing nothing there but the wrinkled skirt of her dress and the pristine press of her corset, she rubbed over the spot where she had felt such pain before. A dark, curly lock fell before her eyes and she hastily brushed it away, wondering why everything was so... Different...

On the opposite wall was a full length, warped mirror which bent her stockinged legs at odd angles and stretched out the stripes in an equally as odd way. She shook her head. Now was not the time to worry about the state of her clothes. She started down a twisting hallway that she hadn't noticed a few moments before and tried to collect her thoughts.

She was turning a bend when she saw something shadowy dart arouund another corner at the end of the hall and a flash of white as it was caught momentarily in the lamp light. She blinked and stopped, hugging herself. She looked around and finally took in the hallway. The walls were a dark red and hung with portraits of creatures as warped and twited as the hall itself. There were cob webs everywhere, and a busted chandelier above her head was covered in them. Sure, it wasn't scary per se, but it was a little creepy. She moved on, thinking about the figure she had just seen speed around this was as she watched her feet over the checked tiles.

_Follow the White Rabbit..._ She blinked when she felt it cross her mind. She then began to run around the twists and turns, ignoring all other turn offs in the hallway from the main one, for something told her she was going the right way. Before she knew it, the hall opened up into a large room, all white but for crimson hangings on the far wall. She made her way right to them, noticing no other feature about the room, and pulled back the curtains, seeing a narrow door there. Realizeing that this had to be the way out, she grasped the doorknob, but cried "Ouch!" and pulled her had away a split second later.

"Don't touch me with your filthy hands!" Came a small and arrogant voice. "Don't tell me you don't have a key!" Almira furrowed her brow and studied the door knob. It was talking to her--in fact, it was looking her right in the eye.

"I am sorry..." She began uncertainly. "I beg your pardon, how rude of me," she said sarcastically, nursing her bitten hand. The door knob sneered at her.

"Well? You're not getting to the garden if you don't have a key."

Almira fumbled in her pocket for a moment, thinking. But, being clever, not imaginative, she brought up the one thing on her mind. "Please, sir, I am looking for the White Rabbit."

†

_**T**__**o **__**B**__**e **__**C**__**ontinue**__**d**_...


	2. The Great White Rabbit

+OneOtherLand+

†

Chapter Two

_no time to say hello; goodbye_

_**T**_he White Rabbit was among the most important and respected creatures in all of Wonderland. He was advisor to the Queen of Hearts, after all, but that meant nothing to him. It was merely a circumstnace of his birth that put him in such a position. For, there had always been a White Rabbit in Wonderland, and there always would be. One a century--or atleast that was how it seemed to work out. And he would attend to the Queen, and be a symbol of loyalty and obedience, just as all those before him. The White Rabbit was always male.

The current White Rabbit was a quiet fellow by the name of Reeves Tremayne and he displayed every quality that the White Rabbits were famous for: wide, gleaming red eyes, soft snowhite hair and ears, pale skin, a small nose, and long limbs. Reeves, however, never took pride in his position, or in his sadistic Queen. No, the White Rabbit felt that something far more important was to come his way, and he was not about to let a whore like Narcissa get in his way.

That having been said, he feared her like shadows fear the Sun. She was a volutious woman, and a very domineering one at that. She had come into the crown in her early teens, and her husband, the aging Lion of Hearts, had died many years ago. In which time Narcissa had set up an equivalent to the human world's aboslute monarchy. She took to severely punishing anyone who dissapointed her, and in his case she would do so personally. He knew she enjoyed it, and she made sure of that fact.

†

I found myself racing in the direction of the Palace of the Queen of Hearts. I pulled my watch out of my red silk waist coat and looked at the stars that traveled about on the perimeter of the face. "This will not be good... She will not be pleased..." I muttered to myself as I darted between trees and stumps and oddly shaped creatures.

Something made me stop, and it didn't take long to figure out just what that something was.

"Chance, I don't wish to deal with you right now." I said without looking up at the figure materializing in front of me.

Coiling and undulating in bands of alternating colors, taking form slowly, from head to tail, was a man. His grin was wide and sinister as always.

"You have all the time in the world, and yet none for yourself... Pity. Her Highness might a be-inclined to have you a be-headed," drawled the Chesire Cat.

†

_**T**_**o **_**B**_**e **_**C**_**ontinued...**

[Sherlock Sorry the first was so long. The next few will be broken up a bit better, I promise. I also am in need of some feedback here, I really am. I hope that I may produce something original here, and I need to know what everyone thinks... ‡


	3. The Steward and the Centipede

+OneOtherLand+

†

Chapter Three

_EAT ME_

_**P**_erhaps she had said something a bit odd, because the doorknob gave Almira a funny look. He pursed his lips--silly thing for a doorknob to have, really--then said, "The White Rabbit, eh? Well, if you give me your key, I will gladly tell you where you might find him."

Of course, Almira had no key, so she wrung her hands and took a different tact. "Look, you pathetic excuse for a doorway! I am new here, and I do not understand your insistence that I give you a key! Certainly if you can talk, you can unlock the _damn_ door yourself!" She grabbed hold of the doorknob with the intent to rip the door off its hinges, but then flew backward with a yowl when the knob turned red and burned her hand.

"I will not be spoken to that way! I answer _only _to the Steward! STEWARD!"

Almira knew of stewards, and laughed at that while she cradled her burnt hands, Stewards were blad little men that were pretty much just servants in suits. So, she started contemplating a way of getting out that door. All too soon, however, she heard a terrible thumping noise coming from behind her and getting steadily closer as the doorknob continued to howl, _'STEWARD!'_.

What she saw push its way into the room made her face go white with fear.

Large, lumpy, glistening, powerful, and unabashedly bald, the incredibly disgusting and reeeking creature stood before Almira, glaring down at her. Or so she thought at first, until she realized it was blind. He was a raw pink in color, with massive forearms and long claws, a pointed and quivering snout, and long gnarly teeth. Almira assumed he must be some demented mole, or something, since she had never actually seen a live one before. The Steward leaned down, his dripping muzzle looming above her head. He must have stood about ten feet high. Almira didn't know for sure, all she knew was this thing was big and smelled like the damp and rotting flesh. He hitched up the strap of an impossibly large pair of vertically striped pair of cover alls before the doorknob spoke.

"This little monster tried to force me open! Eat her, sir! Eat her!"

The beast sniffed at her and blew out a great breath. He snapped his ugly jaws in the air above her had, and Almira felt faint.

"You dare disrespect the Rabbit Hole?" The question came out like the rumbling of the earth itself.

"No-no sir! I am merely lost!" She wondered if she would have to plead with him, or if he would just scoop her up and eat her. She shuddered. "I am looking for the White Rabbit! If you tell me where he is, I will be on my way!"

The beast seemed to consider her words for a moment. Suddenly, his great whiskers twicthed, as if in excitement, and his great claws moved as if on their own accord, and he snatched up something from the shadows of a hallway Almira could have sworn wasn't there a second ago. The Steward returned holding the largest centipede Almira had ever seen, and with one deafening crunch, the head came off and yellowish juices dripped from the Steward's great maw. Almira was now frightened for her life as she never was before. The Steward munched away on the glistening and squirming insect, crunching and squirting bug fluids every where.

Sucking up the last leg, the Steward sat back on his haunches and spoke, "I do not think I can allow you to pass, little one. You have no key, and therefor are an enemy of the Queen." Almira looked up in shuddering disbelief.

"What will you do with me then?" She asked tentatively.

"Eat you."

†

_**T**_**o **_**B**_**e **_**C**_**ontinued...**

--Sherlock-- Some reviews would be super... I do need to know if I am on the right track. Else there is no point in continuing.


	4. Machette

+OneOtherLand+

†

Chapter Four

_i am older than you, and must know better_

_**J**_ust like there had always been a White Rabbit, the had always been a Chesire Cat. But the cat was fundamentally different from our dear old Rabbit. The Cat answered to no authority but his own--_his_ because he generally chose to manifest himself as _male_--and was eternal. Like a phoeneix reborn from the ashes, the Chesire Cat seemed to disspear and return fresh and new, once every few years.

†

_"_**I **_have noticed a strange similarity in books written by experienced writers," said Alice into the mic. "If you have read any two sepparate series by the same author, you will have noticed it, too"_

†

_**T**_he giant creature loomed before her, she had to act before it could grab her. Almira dodged a large hand that came down to try to get a hold of her. She was lucky it was blind.

†

_"_**I**_t__ is nothing big really. A particular phrasing you could have __**sworn **__you read in their last book, or maybe something you saw under another's name. And you wonder, did they even realize they did it?"_

†

"_**Y**_ou must know by now, Cat, that I have no time for your nonsense." The Rabbit spoke quietly, making to move on.

The Chesire Cat was on him before he knew it happened. His head hit the ground with a jarring thud. "You don't deserve what you have been given..." Chance growled in his ear.

"What, no more riddles for me today?" The Cat snarled and slashed him across the face, blood seeping from the four identical wounds there.

"Isn't that your favorite color?"

"No, it's _hers_..." And the Cat got off of him. Narrowing his lamplike, golden eyes, he began to vanish. The Rabbit gathered himself up and hurried along, dabbing at his cheek with a spotted handkercheif.

†

_"_**A**_nd__ then you realize they had to have known, so you ask, 'does the author think I wouldn't notice?' and you feel like they have insulted you, treated you as if you are of lesser intelligence."_

†

_**S**_he ran down the corridor, hearing the ominous thudding behind her as the Steward chased her through the series of tunnels that made up his home. She skidded around a corner, plunging into a profound darkness that she had never before experienced. She pressed her back to the wall and tried to recall something, _anything_, she might have heard about moles.

She was dismayed to discovered she knew nothing that would be to her advantage. Just as she heard the thunderous steps a few yards away, she realized that darkness made no difference to something that had no eyes.

She screamed and began to run into the penetrating darkness as she _felt_ the thing round the corner.

†

_"_**I**_t__ is a certain arrogance that all writers, even myself, have difficulty overcoming. So, I try to avoid it, but sometimes I can't help but falling back on an old stand-by... My daughter has pointed this out to me more than once," she laughed, indicating a small, darkheaded girl sitting next to her. She looked no older than ten._

_She sat there, gazing blankly at the screen of the camera pointed at her. She blinked her big blue eyes, and it was as if she were dead to all else but her own hands, which were twisting at eachother as if in some wrestling match. The audience watched as she figeted there on that small sofa next to her mother, who had begun to worry at her strange behavior._

_"Almira?" A pause._

_"Almira?"_

_"STEWARD!!!"_

†

_**S**_he had made it back around to the exit, god knows how, shaking and breathing heavily. The doorknob continued to shriek, and Almira knew by now that forcing her way out was pointless. The thumping grew nearer, and Almira pleaded desperately for something that would help her. Anything.

And then, in the center of the room, she noticed a little glass table with something long and sharp displayed neatly right on top of it. As she moved closed, the light coming from overhead caused its metallic surface to shine. She grasped it by its black, wooden handle and gazed at the shining blade that was about as long as her forearm. A twisted little smile curved the corners of her mouth.

"STEWARD!!!"

†

_**T**_**o **_**B**_**e **_**C**_**ontinued**...

* * *

So I need some reviews. I am tired of begging for you guys to notice me, or to just tell me that you think my stoyr sucks. If you tell me that, I will know I have been wasting my time and just move on.


	5. Doormouse

**Disclaimer**: I do not own these lyrics. The lyrics are belong to the Foo Fighters, and are from their song _The Pretender_.

I am aware that they may seem to come to an abrupt stop, but the are not needed for the last bit.

* * *

OneOtherLand

†

Chapter Five

_i beg your pardon -- did you speak?_

_Keep you in the dark, you know they all...pretend._

_Keep you in the dark, and so it all...began._

I heard him aproach, that persistent pounding that almost made me believe death had really come for me. Almost, but not quite.

_Send in your skeletons, sing as their bones come marching in... again._

His great belly preceeded him into the room where I lay in wait, the weapon in my hand a friendly instrument I was only just getting to know. I did still feel like that beast held to power... But not for long, if I could help it.

_They need you buried deep, the secrets that you keep are ready._

_Are you ready?_

His great blind face was fierce and his nose sought me out, but I had the upper hand. I already knew where he was.

_I'm finished making sense, done pleading ignorance;_

_That whole... defense._

Just as I made a move for him, he turned to face me. That doorknob was still screeching in the background as I and the Steward lunged at the same time for the other. I took a dive as a clawed fist soared at me.

_Spinning infinity, boy, the wheel is spinning me._

_It's never ending--never ending._

_Same old story._

Rolling to avoid the mole's horny foot as he brought it down, I struck. Time seemed to slow as we both realized what had happened. As if against a great pressure, his mouth opened and out came a muffled roar.

_What if I say I'm not like the others?_

_What if I say I'm not just another one of your plays?_

_Your the pretender._

_What if I say that I'll never surrender?_

I gazed at the gash in this belly, slowly oozing a pale greenish fluid. I smiled. He recovered faster than I had expected and I had little time to examine my handiwork.

_What if I say I'm not like the others?_

_What if I say I'm not just another one of your plays?_

_Your the pretender._

_What if I say that I'll never surrender?_

In a whirl of motion and a flsh of light, I was smacked by one of those great paws, and hit the wall with jarring force. I laid there, momentarily dazed as the Steward screeched over the new souvenier I had given him.

_In time our soul untold, I'm just another soul for sale._

_Oh well..._

Hissing and spitting, he approached me as I tried to stand. My hand on the handle of the machette shook. I was in an odd sort of pain that was strong one moment, and a quiet whisper the next. Another hand came down.

_The page is out of print, we are not permanent._

_We're temporary, temporary,_

_Same old story..._

With a strength I had never known, I hurled myself at the beast. There were screams--I think they were my own--as I went into a frenzy. I slashed and stabbed and that damn thing would not go down.

_What if I say I'm not like the others?_

_What if I say I'm not just another one of your plays?_

_Your the pretender._

_What if I say that I'll never surrender?_

And then...

He went down.

And I fell to my knees.

I had no idea what I had done.

Time seemed to try to make up for its slowness and three things began to happen at once; a high, wailing lament screamed from behind me; the Steward's great stomach burst open; and the room began to fill rapidly with a pussy green liquid.

I stood and something even stranger happened; small mammals and rodents were all swimming through the puss from the direction of where the Steward's body lay--as I looked over at his stinking corpse, I saw I crow climb out and shake out his feathers. And they were all headed straight for me.

I tried to back away, "No! You vermin--get away!" I yelled, brandishing the machette. Unfortunately, the liquid was too thick to walk through easily, and they made it to me before I had get to the door. "Back OFFF---UH!"

SPLASH!

I had fallen into the puss that seemed to atleast have stopped rising, but by then it would have been uo around my waist. I flopped about for a second, startling a group of rats that crowded around me. I gained mty bearings and set my feet in the ground. "back away..." I said quietly, holding the knife before myself.

"Please, miss!" Sqeaked a mouse that had managed to climb my shoulder without me noticing. "Please, we mean no harm. You have saved us and we are grateful," he said, and I Looked down at him, faintly annoyed by the knob's sobbing a few paces away. "You have freed us, and supplied us with sustenance."

_Ugh, they can't possibly mean--_ But they did. Most of the creatures, birds, mice, rats, cats, and even the centipede from earlier were crowded around the body, scarfing down the copious amount of flesh left over. The beast's stomach stood out a good four or five feet above the liquid.

I looked away.

"Please, miss," said the mouse again. "Is there anything we can do for the new Steward of the Western Province?"

"Excuse me?" I said dully, feeling slow and stuporous since the adrenaline had worn off.

"You replace the Steward, ma'am. It is a most ancient law of _One-tur-lind_ that the killer of the Steward replaces him." He said in a matter-of-fact sort of sqeak.

"Where am I again?"

"_Onedurlind_, miss--what is your name?"

"Almira. Yours?"

"The Doormouse, servant to the Madd Hatter."

* * *

Review for the next chapter. Kudos to Luna. 


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